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IBM, Vivísimo, and the ‘Big Data’ Buzz
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by Theresa Cramer
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It may be too early to declare "big data" the buzzword—or phrase, as the case may be—of 2012, but that has not stopped companies from trying to conquer the challenges posed by this trendy phrase. On April 25, 2012, when IBM announced an agreement to acquire Vivísimo, a provider of federated discovery and navigation software, the company said, "Today's news accelerates IBM's big data analytics initiatives with advanced federated capabilities allowing organizations to access, navigate, and analyze the full variety, velocity, and volume of structured and unstructured data without having to move it." But not everyone was so sure this move positioned IBM any better when it comes to handling massive amounts of unstructured information—or are even entirely sure that the idea of big data isn't a boondoggle.
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ProQuest for Everyone: The Udini Service Officially Launches
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by Barbara Quint
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Expert commentators have remarked for years (all right, ME) how difficult, nigh impossible, it can be for "real people" to access the major database collections from leading library vendors. Marketing strategies focused on licensing content to libraries can leave people not served by large academic or public libraries without any way of reaching major database aggregations. Now one of the largest database aggregators, ProQuest has officially launched an end-user service that is open to all web users. Udini (pronounced You-dee-nee) currently carries about 150 million full-text articles and dissertations representing 12,000 publications supplied by 3,800 publishers.
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CrossRef Announces FundRef Pilot
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CrossRef announced FundRef, a pilot collaboration between scholarly publishers and funding agencies that will standardize the names of research funders and add grant numbers attributed in journal articles or other scholarly documents. The collaboration would allow researchers, publishers, and funding agencies to track the published research that results from specific funding bodies.
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MIT and Harvard Launch a ‘Revolution in Education’
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Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) joined forces to offer free online courses in a project aimed at attracting millions of online learners around the world, the universities announced. Beginning this fall, a variety of courses developed by faculty at both institutions will be available online through the new $60 million partnership, known as "edX." Through edX, the two institutions will collaborate to enhance campus-based teaching and learning and build a global community of online learners.
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Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset Now Available via EBSCO Discovery Service
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EBSCO Publishing made the newly released Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset available through EBSCO Discovery Service. The dataset contains 12 million open-access catalog records from Harvard's 73 libraries.
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Online Consumer Privacy in the Spotlight
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by Paula J. Hane
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Choose Privacy Week is a national public awareness campaign that aims to educate the public on how to protect their privacy and understand their rights. This year, Choose Privacy Week is being held May 1-7, 2012. The timing for this public awareness campaign couldn't have been better. Within the past week, we've seen controversial cybersecurity legislation highlighted in the news and high-profile media coverage of Google's latest investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
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